The Federalist Society is a group of conservatives and libertarians
interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the
principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation
of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is
emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is,
not what it should be.

The Stanford Chapter provides a forum for
discussion of these ideas at Stanford Law School, primarily through
sponsorship of debates, lectures, and symposia. Organized in 1982, the
Stanford Chapter is one of the founding chapters.

The
National Organization

In April 1982, a small group of law
students from Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, and Yale organized a symposium on
federalism at Yale Law School. These students were greatly dissatisfied
with the academic climate on their campuses and wanted to create a forum
for debate on a wider range of legal viewpoints than their law school
classroom experiences were providing. When the first symposium was held,
there were fledging chapters at only these four universities. Inspired by
the success of our initial program, other chapters soon formed at law
schools across the country. The Federalist Society was then incorporated in
August 1982. Later, to answer the obvious need at the next level of the
legal community, the Society developed a Lawyers Division that successfully
took root in every major legal center.

Since 1982, the Society has grown to include approximately 180 law school
chapters and has become a major force in legal education. Currently, the
national organization has approximately 35,000 members. The Federalist
Society now includes Lawyers Division chapters in nearly 70 cities as well
as 15 Practice Groups covering various specialized areas of the law. All
chapters and practice groups are run autonomously by their members in
coordination with the national office.

Why
Join?

·Interaction with prominent public officials,
judges, and scholars

·Special invitations to national conventions,
regional conferences, and local events

"The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if
they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the
consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the
legislative body."
-- The Federalist No. 78